Friday, January 13th

THE DAILY REPORT

I have added a new song to my "things to listen to over and over again while creating" repertoire. It's "Aviva Pastoral" by Nathan Larson, which you may have heard while contemplating your own mortality and the transience of things vis a vis chocolate Easter bunnies.

I'm getting something of a late start today. It was kind of disappointing to wake up after eleven and realize that I won't be able to get an hour of writing done before noon like I've been doing, but oh well.

For today, I've got a lot of things I could be writing... so for the most part I'm going to do the "follow the muse thing". Today's goal is to write. Write, and decide what to do for the next Other Tales... depending on when I hit on a viable idea for that, I might end up writing some or all of it today.

Next week I'm going to get back on board with doing the less writery things, starting with the mid-month newsletter which will be on Tuesday, January 17th. Because that's still writing, albeit of a different sort. And yeah, I've decided to scrap the dates and call them "mid-month" and "end-of-month" and let them fall on the day where it's convenient.

It's been fun (and useful, and restful) to spend some time doing nothing but writing, but I do have other stuff to get to and I think if I tried to do this all the time I'd kill the magic. But I do need to remember to do it more often.

STATE OF THE ME

I got to sleep later last night, but slept a decent 8-ish hours when I did. My shoulder flare-up of yesterday seems to be over. I've successfully lowered my caffeine intake down to one can of Dr. Pepper early in the day. So, good stuff there.

DREAMS FROM LAST NIGHT

None memorable.

PLANS FOR TODAY

Pretty simple: four hours of on-the-timer writing.

End of day wrap.

So, I did ~4,500 words today. I brought two of the stories I've been working on to near a chapter/scene break, and am very nearly finished with another.

The one that's nearly finished is the one that would be difficult to market, so pretty much exists only for my own edification and amusement... but you know, that's important, too. And far from it being a distraction, my word counts for just the other things I do on the days on which I've worked on it have easily met or exceeded what I consider to be my best days. Some big lessons there. Like, you've got to write what you've got to write. When I finish it I plan on spending the time I've been using for it writing instead some hardcore stories with characters from the MUniverse, which is something I do in fact have a market for.

The things that are near good breaks...

One is the short story "By Half Measures", which may end up being a novelette, as I can see it consisting of between three and five distinct chapters/scenes. It's a story I originally gave the working title of "Romance Romance Revolution", as it concerns a budding relationship--or perhaps regard--between a prince who is the supreme ruler of his land and a woman with democratic inclinations. It's not an erotic piece at all, and really only very broadly falls under the umbrella of "romance"... people who skim for the good parts will reach the end and double back. The first chapter/scene of it is about 4,000 words in its current form (there may be some expansion) and will be included in the next newsletter.

The other is a more marketable erotic piece (in this case having the meaning of "nobody dies horribly"). It's not quite a Porn Without Plot... I'd call it a Porn With Personalities, because like much of my writing it's more about people than about the things that happen to them. It has a D/s theme (go figure) and concerns three characters: a man, a submissive woman who lives 24/7 as his pet, and his girlfriend. The story as it exists right now is ~6,000 words and the climax of it is an encounter between the pet and the girlfriend, but I see it as either the first chapter of a larger work that will encompass more permutations/pairings among the three characters, or else the first story in a potential series of stories. I think I'll wait until I start writing the continuation before I decide if it looks like the next chapter or a sequel.

I have yet to put erotica into the newsletter and I don't think I'm going to start doing that, but I'll include a tamer excerpt of the writing.